Vogue International Editor Suzy Menkes is the best-known fashion journalist in the world. After 25 years commenting on fashion for the International Herald Tribune (rebranded recently as The International New York Times), Suzy Menkes now writes exclusively for Vogue online, covering fashion worldwide.

#SuzyMFW: Pucci - Focus On Colour

Massimo Giorgetti delved into the Pucci archive and pulled out a collection that was visually blinding.

Acid green: WOW! Hazard warning yellow: POW! Time to pull out the sunglasses. And as if these vivid drafts of colour were not enough on their own, the Pucci collection was narrated by a plummy English-speaking voice defining the essence of colours.

"Where did you find the music?" I asked designer Massimo Giorgetti as the last blast of colour and bold print left the stage, not to mention shoes and weekend-away wheeler bags with geometric blocks of colour. No wonder that some models had sun hats with long fringed pieces that fell over their faces as though they could not face the blinding colours.

Emilio Pucci (Foto: Antonio Barros)

"The soundtrack is Ken Nordine from Chicago and New York in the Thirties,"' said Massimo. "There is a beautiful video on YouTube, ‘Colors’."

But what about those vivid shades on the clothes, the emerald paillette-covered top with silken strands streaming from the wrists, above a paler leaf green trouser? Attractive - yes, but still very visually loud.

Emilio Pucci (Foto: Antonio Barros)

"The colours are all original to the Pucci archives - the acid green and orange, the newness in this collection is the bling-bling part," said the designer, apparently referring to the quantity of sparkle and shimmer that looked sleek and strong.

Since the catwalk flooring was a recapturing of the swirling colours in prints which was the original Emilio Pucci's style, it might have occurred to the designer in his fourth season that blinding, screaming colour is best used on clothes as a gesture, not a full-on cascade of shocking pink silken fringing from neck to feet. Nor bronze paillettes pouring like a shower down to the ankles. Nor what looked like a hazard warning nylon rain coat covering the body.

Nobody would expect Pucci to go back to its distant jet set years in the Sixties - half a century ago. That was when the Florentine Marchese became the first designer to link sportswear with prints and to put his name as a logo on his designs.

Emilio Pucci (Foto: Antonio Barros)

But that was then. And there is currently a problem with print which, in this digital age, has become available to everyone. Swamping the cheap stores, printed modern clothes look much like the more costly versions - at least from a distance.

Maybe that is why Christian Lacroix, a master of print, who worked for four years (2002-2005) as creative director at Pucci, has recently had success designing for Spanish fast fashion company Desigual.

Emilio Pucci (Foto: Antonio Barros)

Where does that leave Pucci now? The current designer, who has built an impressive following for his own well-priced MSGN brand, has to decide how to position his work for Pucci so that it inspires a new generation but does not turn off everyone else.

Pierre-Yves Roussel, CEO of LVMH fashion group, sitting front row at Pucci, said he thought that currently the historic brand had nowhere near reached its potential in sales. A recent step has been to move the studios of Pucci to Milan from its ancestral home in Florence and to bring the archives together.

Vivid bags from Pucci (Foto: @suzymenkesvogue)

Could it be that Pucci's time as a fashion brand is over? Or that it should perhaps take the Vetements route, where manager Guram Gvasalia has collaborated with existing companies to create products designed by his brother Demna.

In a strange coincidence, on the very day that Pucci's new collection was shown, JJ Martin, a former model, fashion journalist and, more recently, a maker of re-created vintage clothes for her brand, La Double J., showed off a new collaboration with classic Milanese store Larusmiani, on Via Monte Napoleone. Her line of colourful pyjamas and bath robes, using vintage prints, was colourful and fun.

JJ Martin of La Double J. with a pair of vintage print pyjamas made in collaboration with historic Italian retailer Larusmiani. (Foto: @suzymenkesvogue)

La Double J. has also worked with the legacy of prints from Mantero, a 114-year-old silk manufacturing company on Lake Como, to make a see-now, buy-now collection. It consists of fresh cotton dresses, long sand-coloured shorts, with a holiday vibe. If a smart, modern-minded person can work this idea up, shouldn't others think about it?

Last summer, I visited the Pucci archives in the country, where Laudomia Pucci, keeper of the flame, had invited a group of students from London's Central Saint Martins. The results of their treatment of the heritage designs were striking.

Pucci is too good to tear up its past from its roots and hope to re-plant it. But there is need of some hard cooperative thinking.